In Your Honour
by idioticonion
Summary: Robin tries to save Barney from himself. AU Season 4ish set after 4.9 The Naked Man and written before 4.10 The Fight was aired.
1. Chapter 1

The door slams with an angry crash behind her as she storms into the men's restroom, heart thumping. "Barney, what the HELL?" She screams at him.

He's sat on the floor, back against the wall in every sense, knees bent, staring into the distance. He's continually flexing the fingers of one hand, the other shielding the knuckles but not quite touching them. He doesn't react, either to her voice or the door.

"Barney, look at me!" Robin screeches, her fury over-riding any sense of self preservation or thought that, after what she'd just seen him do, it might not be a wise idea to come in here and confront him. He's drunk, he's out of control and she's in here alone with him. Still he won't (or can't) look at her but he balls his fingers back into a fist, an echo of what was.

"I'm trying to help you!" The words explode out of her and end with a sob and she realises she is shaking, the shock-wave of adrenalin finally having burst within her. "If you can't even help me out here… You don't deserve… Christ!" Seeing that she's getting nowhere, she turns right around and leaves him to it. She saw the confusion and betrayal in Lily's eyes when she followed Ted to the bathroom and at the time she'd only been acting on instinct. Now she can make the more sensible decision; decide where her loyalties lie.

She gets about three steps before she changes her mind.

This time, the door opens with a whisper not a bang. He's still sitting there but this time his head is bowed. He could have passed out, but she knows better.

He looks pathetic. He's lost his suit jacket and his tie and the front of his shirt is soaking wet. He doesn't look like a threat. He doesn't look strong. But Robin's always seen that there's something small and ferocious in him, something with teeth. He could have fought Ted off if he'd wanted to, she knew that. Ted probably did too. Robin nodded - Ted was a braver man than she'd ever suspected.

Robin knows that there's more to this than she realised but that doesn't stop her worrying about Barney. She's watched him deteriorate before her eyes after his accident in the summer, watched his behaviour shift subtly, slowly, over the months until she hardly recognises him.

"Get up," She said. No reaction, but she didn't expect any. "Get up and I'll help you out. I don't expect you'll be able to make it across the bar right now."

He frowns. She crosses her arms, determined. Slowly he tries to stand. He's shaky, not at all steady on his feet and she moves in to help him.

His heart is beating wildly, she can feel it through the thin cotton of his wet shirt where she supports him. At any other time, this would be funny. This would be something they could joke about a few days afterwards in the bar, maybe for years afterwards. Right now, Robin wonders if they'll ever joke again.

*--*--*

The five of them are laughing in the bar and there's nothing different from the usual except that Barney's bought all the drinks. Robin doesn't think that any of the others have noticed because Wendy keeps them coming with her usual low-key sensitivity. But Robin notices how loud he is and how he's outpacing her by two or three shots to one. He's drinking scotch, neat. Doubles. Everybody else is drinking beer.

Her fingers itch for a cigarette and she gives him the usual signal, eyebrow wiggle, finger waggle, but he misses it. Not slipping out for a quick cigarette puts her on edge a little. But then Marshall says something cute and funny and it distracts her.

Later, at the bar, Barney is making out with some bimbo and it's ikky and over-done. It seems crass, even for him, but typical of his recent behaviour.

Robin turns her back on him and talks to Ted. She's good at listening to his lame work worries. Anything is better than spooking herself when everyone else seems to be having such a great time.

*--*--*

Barney's not heavy and he doesn't lean on her or grope her. He looks and feels like a wounded animal but she's still conscious of those teeth. She gets Barney into his apartment and on to his bed and has his shirt off before she realises how it might look. A hand snakes out, around the back of her neck, and before she knows it she's drawn into a clumsy kiss.

Angry again, she pulls back, swatting him across the chest. "Barney, NO!" She says, in the same voice she used to use on her dogs. He reacts the same, visibly recoiling, his eyes large and sorrowful as if he knows he's done something wrong but doesn't know why. After all, he's only acting on instinct.

Like an animal.

"This isn't about sex," She explains, between gritted teeth. "Oh man, this _so_ isn't about sex. After-" She swallows hard. "How you can even think about it?" Her lip curls and she doesn't notice that she's not talking as she mentally fills in his side of the conversation; his excuses. "Barney, I just wanted to make sure you're okay."

He looks up at her, mute.

"You're okay?" It isn't a question. She doesn't really want to know the answer. Well, she knows the answer. Of course he isn't freakin' okay! But he's drunk, dull eyed and uncommunicative. Not the best time to have this conversation.

Still…

"What was that all about?" She looks at him, imploring him.

He frowns again, almost as though he's stuck somewhere, inside. He can't even tell her that he can't tell her.

"I think the others'll hate me for this. For looking after you…" She said, the guilt eating away at her. She feels a buzz in her jeans pocket and fishes out her phone, leaving him there on the bed as she walks through into his kitchen.

It's Ted.

"Yep?" She answers. In the pause before he says anything, she feels like he's judging her.

*--*--*

Marshall staggers back, clutching his nose, blood covering his fingers and gushing quickly over his chin.

Barney's expression is one of focussed hatred, even as his shoulder follows the swing and he almost over-balances for the force of it.

Everyone freezes for a moment. The shock is too great to really take it in.

Robin's the only one to see Barney's face immediately after. The mania fades in a second, followed by an instant realisation, sickening, but he shrugs it off and launches himself at Marshall again, almost for effect.

Ted wrestles him to the ground while Lily runs to Marshall, screaming and crying and landing a good kick at Barney's ribs before Robin hauls her off.

Ted drags Barney across the floor while Marshall is left trembling and trying to stop some very un-manly tears. "You hit him, you bastard!" Lily yells, unnecessarily. It's not as if everyone didn't see it.

Robin's trying to hold on to Lily as Ted hauls Barney towards the bathroom and Carl vaults the bar like an athlete, like, a minute too late to actually do anything.

Barney punched Marshall. In the face. For no reason. For no reason at all that she could see.

What the HELL?


	2. Chapter 2

"Put him on," Ted says, clutching the phone to his ear. Robin doesn't reply right away. "I tried his phone and he didn't answer. Robin, put him on the phone right now!"

"He's asleep, Ted. Can't this wait till morning?"

This makes him angry. Not that Robin's defending Barney exactly, although he sure as hell doesn't see why she is. No, it makes him angry that he's not there to shake the hell out of his friend until he wised up.

"Put him on, Robin. Now!"

There's silence on the line, then a crackle and a change in pressure and he can hear breathing.

"Barney?" He asks, although he knows it's him.

"Ted? Just leave me alone." Barney's words are slurred.

"Barney, you know there's not going to be any intervention about this, don't you?"

He takes the silence as a yes.

"I don't care how drunk you are…" He continues but Barney interrupts.

"How's Marshall?"

"I think you broke his nose," Ted says. He's not sure if this is true but he knows he has to push this.

There's more silence.

"I don't care how _out of it_ you are right now Barney. There's no last chance. You know that, don't you?"

"Ted, please…"

"Barney, no. Not again. You're going to talk to me now or not at all. Not at ALL, Barney."

And so Barney begins to speak.

*--*--*

Ted drags him into the men's restroom and shoves his head into the sink, spinning the faucet so that the cold water gushes over his head, soaking through both their clothes in seconds. Despite that fact that it freezes his hand, Ted keeps his grip on Barney, holding the back of his neck like a recalcitrant puppy dog. It brings back bad memories from school of when he was on the receiving end and it wasn't just a sink that was involved.

Finally, Ted lets Barney up, sputtering and wheezing, his hair plastered flat to his head. His friend staggers and clutches at the wall, not exactly sober but at least he's coherent.

"You promised!" Ted says, forcing each word out between gritted teeth. "You promised you'd never do that again. And Marshall? Barney, really? Marshall? What the hell is wrong with you?"

Barney waves his hand at Ted, still choking and bent double.

"Nothing he could have said is any excuse for you punching people. Nothing! I thought we'd agreed that a long time ago."

Barney sinks slowly down, leaving a trail of water on the tiled wall, until he is on the floor, gaping like a fish out of water.

"You stay there and think about that. I'm going to go see if Marshall is okay. We'll _talk_ later."

Ted glares at him and leaves, leaving Barney, white as a sheet, looking very much as though he's about to throw up.

*--*--*

The four of them are all sitting at their usual table at McLaren's. Marshall's nose is red and swollen and he wears a kind-of strained expression, half way between a frown and a pout. Robin has half made up her mind to leave. Everything feels wrong.

"Robin," Marshall says, taking a deep breath. "I'm really sorry."

Lily pats his arm, giving him an encouraging smile.

"What?" Robin asks him, entirely confused. "What for?" She can't for the life of her understand why Marshall would be sorry for anything and as much as she feels for Barney and as weird as everything is between them now, she thinks that it's misplaced of Marshall to feel in any way responsible for Barney's breakdown.

"I'm sorry for- for…" He gulps. Lily squeezes his arm.

Robin frowns as Marshall continues to speak. His words make no sense. In a second, she's furiously angry and she feels like-

She feels like punching him.

And suddenly everything makes sense.

*--*--*

Robin tries not to eavesdrop while at the same time she can't help but strain desperately for every mumbling word but Barney's speaking too quietly for her to hear anything he says. That's good though, right? So long as he and Ted aren't shouting then they must be talking things through?

Right?

Robin gets herself a glass of water and when she returns to the door, there's only silence so he must be off the phone. Opening it, she goes over to the bed and sits down beside him. Barney is curled up in a foetal ball, forearms covering his face.

"I hit Ted once," He says, softly.

She jumps. She'd thought he was asleep.

"It was a few years ago. You could say he deserved it," Barney continues, his voice soft and a register higher than the super-confident-guy-drawl he usually uses. "I hit him because I thought he deserved it. But a lot of people deserve it. Doesn't mean I have to give it."

Robin feels his body shudder beneath her fingers and she allows her hand to move, stroking his side, soothingly.

"When you grow up where I did, how I did, with the family I did, when you're just a kid, you learn to settle a lot of arguments with your fists."

Robin feels a little sceptical of this. She can't imagine Barney ever being like that.

"Of course, by the time I went to college, I met Shannon. She's the one who- who-" He stifles a sob. "She showed me... and when she left me, I just wanted to kill him. Greg. Her _new man_. I just wanted to _tear him apart_ with my bare hands. But I didn't. So, you've got to understand, it took a lot, Robin. Believe me when I tell you that. It took a lot for me to hit Ted."

Robin's hand drifts up to his damp hair, dragging gently through it, encouraging him to continue speaking.

"But Ted… he told me if I ever did that again, if I ever-" He goes silent for a while. "It was my Mom. I hit Ted once because he made this joke about my Mom. I never let anyone say anything about her. No one…"

Robin's mind whirled; it spun so fast that she wanted to yell at him to shut up - to stop for a moment just so that she could let the words settle in place and follow what he was saying.

"Sometimes… sometimes I just see… red. When people push my buttons. When everything gets screwed up. And everything's just so screwed up so badly right now."

She slides into bed beside him and draws him towards her. His body feels sharp and angular and his skin is cold and clammy, a physical manifestation on how broken he's become. Robin makes reassuring noises and holds him until the shakes subside.

*--*--*

She sits there, furious. Strangely, she's not angry at Barney, not even at Marshall, but she's more upset than she can say at Lily and Ted. That they could have sat there and heard all this, heard Marshall saying these things about her, and _not_ punched him out for it… that hurt.

Barney comes into the bar and sits down nonchalantly, nodding over to Wendy as if nothing had ever happened.

To anyone else, to all of them, he looks completely in control.

"Marshall," he says, taking a jug of beer from Wendy and placing it in the centre of the table. "Sorry man."

Marshall shrugs, frowning slightly, then catches Barney's eye. In the connection between them, some kind of male telepathy happens because Marshall sits up a little straighter and his features relax. "No problem," He says.

That was it?

That's all they were going to say?

Robin gets up, slowly, deliberately, pushes past Ted and walks out of the bar.

*--*--*

Robin's face is pressed into the back of Barney's neck, the short hairs tickling her nose. She breathes him in. His shoulders are smooth, the flesh firm beneath her fingers as she makes sweeping circles across his skin, over his biceps and down to his waist.

Dawn is breaking.

He sighs, rising quickly out of his slumber and his hand reaches out, catching her wrist. Turning over, he quickly rolls her on to her back in one, smoothly practiced movement, his weight pinning her down.

He's all animal again, kissing her insistently. She can feel him harden, through his boxers, against the thin material of her skirt and he grinds himself against her.

She can't blame him. He's acting on instinct.

But she can push him away.

In a minute.

He's kissing her and his fingers swoop down over her blouse and cup her breast. Oh, he's so fluid, so sure of himself. He knows exactly where to touch her, how to move.

She stops him.

"Hey?" She says sharply, with a frown. "What are you doing?"

He looks confused for a second, lost, almost as if he's going to try and persuade her. But the realisation shows in his eyes and the humanity is back in them in the second before he sits up and rolls over, his expression like thunder, tired and grouchy. He rolls on to his back.

"I'm so in love with you that it's killing me," He blurts.

She lies there, not sure what to say. What the hell doe you say to something like that?

The silence between them is pregnant with possibilities but the longer is stretches on, the more she knows it doesn't bode well.

"You punched Marshall. In the face." Is all she can say.

"Yeah, and he totally deserved it."

"Barney, you punched him in the face."

"Whatever. Robin, isn't it time for you to leave? I don't need a babysitter."

She sits up, the anger flaring up inside her again. "Well you did last night. You were a mess, Barney."

"I told you," he says, his voice sounding so normal that it's weird because the words are just so wrong. "I'm in love with you." How exactly did that explain anything?

She decides to ignore him.

"You've got to get help. You can't go around just punching people."

"Yeah, Robin. Like, I learned that one when I was about nine years old."

"Then why in the hell did you punch him?"

Barney turns on to his side.

Robin gets up to leave but knows this isn't over. She's not going to let this one go.

*--*--*

"I called you a whore," Marshall says. Robin laughs. It's a strange reflex to something that sounds so ridiculous that she's sure it has to have a punch line. "I called you a whore, about five or six times. I was trying to make a point and that was mean. But you've been going with all these random guys lately and you were telling us, joking around that- that the dude from three nights ago might have actually _paid_ you to sleep with him and… look, Robin, it made me angry to think that you'd let yourself be brought that low. You're an intelligent woman. It upset me. So I was ranting, I guess. We were all pretty drunk. I must has said it about five or six times and Barney yelled at me and told me that if I ever said that word again I wouldn't know what hit me." He laughs nervously and Lily looks worried. "Yeah, I know what hit me."

Robin's jaw drops. "You called me a whore?" She feels her face flush, half with anger, half with humiliation.

"Look, I'm really sorry. It was a shitty thing to say about a friend, okay. It was wrong. I just wanted you to know that I realise it was wrong."

Robin feels sick and all she can think about is Barney's voice, strained and full of pain: "I'm so in love with you that it's killing me." And Marshall's sitting there looking at her hopefully, expecting her forgiveness and she feels like punching him.

Suddenly everything makes sense.

*--*--*

Barney rushes out after her and nearly runs right into her as she stops in the middle of the pavement and turns around, her hands on her hips.

"Barney, I do not- _I do NOT_ need you to defend my honour!"

He stands there, stunned, mouth half open and she feels like a Spanish queen who's just told her conquistador that she's not that bothered about the country he's discovered and he can go away and come back when he's found some tobacco.

"I- I wasn't-" He stutters.

Yeah, he's got some kind of crush on her. She can totally see that now. And it should flatter her ego but it's creepy and he's her friend and she doesn't want him wrecking himself on the jagged rocks of her heart.

She reaches out and touches his arm. "I mean, it was kind-of sweet I guess."

He flinches away, horrified. "_Sweet_?"

"Barney, I'm a big girl. I can look after myself. And you've got to stop this. You know there's nothing between us. There's not going to be anything between us."

"I can't stop it," He says, his voice a hopeless whine. "I've tried. I've tried everything."

She gets a sinking feeling in her gut. This is Ted all over again. Why does she always have this effect on guys? This time there was no way she was going to give in and, anyway, what the hell would a relationship with Barney be like?

"Barney, I love you. Like a brother. There's never going to be anything more between us than that. I care about you too much to lie to you."

She sees it then in his eyes. The crushing blow. The almost unbearable pain. It hurts her more than she'd thought it would to inflict it. It hurts her more than it ever did with Ted.

The silence between them feels like an ending.

"I don't want to lose you," She says, pointlessly. It sounds like a conciliation prize. A tiny band-aid put across a severed limb.

The light goes out of his eyes and he stands up straight, smiling a crooked smile. "Hey, Scherbatsky. No problem. We're bros, right?"

She wishes he'd rage a little at her. She wishes he'd react in some way. Because she knows now just how much he's burying and how much it's eating him up from the inside.

"Barney…" She tries.

"Robin, It's okay. I'll see you tomorrow." He's good. Only someone very close to him would see the cracks in that performance. "Don't be too hard on Marshall. He's a dork but he means well. You know that." Barney says with a ghost of a smile, acknowledging the irony of his words and he turns on his heel with a tilt of his chin and heads back to the bar, leaving her standing there on the sidewalk.

Her heart is beating a little too fast and it takes a while for her to talk herself out of following Barney back into the bar. When she checks her phone, there's a message from Lily.

Robin bites her lip. She's weathered the hurricane. From tomorrow, she's facing the huge task of rebuilding and repair. From tomorrow, she's going to have to face her friends. But for now, she digs out a cigarette, pops it between her lips and lights it.

"I'm so in love with you that it's killing me," he'd said.

Well, she won't let it. He's her friend and she absolutely won't let him be brought down by these feelings for her.

Taking a long drag from the cigarette, Robin sets her resolve. From tomorrow she'll try and save him from himself.


End file.
